


but its you my love (and i'll love you still in hell)

by thecanary



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Suicide, but yea big on the suicide to do w kierens death, like seriously TRIGGER WARNING, monologues tbh, so read w caution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:03:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16527911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecanary/pseuds/thecanary
Summary: three speeches kieren has made to a dead rick, at three different times.





	but its you my love (and i'll love you still in hell)

"Hey Rick," Kieren started, his words only slightly overlapping each other, courage egged on by cider burning in his belly. "Hope you can hear me. I don't wanna do this if you can't hear me, because I'm doing this for us, I'm doing this because a world without you isn't my world, it's, it's, it's bullshit Rick." 

Kieren stuttered the last few words out, leaning his back against the wall of the cave, tracing fingers of one hand over 'REN + RICK 4EVER', loosely gripping the neck of the cider bottle with the other. Tears were welling up in his eyes, his vision blurring and head aching, a hot sting at the back of his throat. There was no backing out now. 

"It's bullshit Rick," he continued. "Maybe you wouldn't be dead if I hadn't given you that mixtape. I thought it could help you, I wanted to make you happy but after that your dad, he got so angry Rick he was so angry at me and I couldn't do anything about it but all I really want to do is say sorry. Not to your dad. Rick I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry Rick I shouldn't be the one who gets to live out of this. You deserve to live, to get a future. Remember when I won my first art medal? I should have let that be it Rick, I don't need anything else I need you and my art and my art was going fine but with you gone I don't even want to do that anymore."

He finished the cider, sweet and acidic, the taste of illicit parties and meetings fitting in so poorly yet so well with the dark cave. He hadn't even left a note, Kieren realised, as he sat there. There was no note, no nothing; hell, if he was lucky they might not even find his body. No funeral - his parents were optimists at heart - just missing posters for years until even if he was alive the face on the poster wouldn't match that of the world weary man he was sure he'd become. Well, he wasn't sure. He didn't think he would become a proper man, a proper adult. He'd hit eighteen, sure, but that was it for him, he didn't need much more than that. 

"I love you Rick," he said, embracing what would be his last words as he unsheathed his swiss army knife. "I love you Rick, I'm sorry, I love you." 

Over and over again like they were the only words in the world to him and even as his blood ran, slow at first then too fast then slow again when he was lightheaded, knowing it was all over, he wasn't unhappy. He was glad, relieved even. He couldn't go on without Rick, could he? Just an eighteen-year-old kid alone in the world, first love of his life dead. That wasn't what he had planned. So as he died, still whispering 'I love yous' to his final moment, he felt relieved, embracing whatever was going to come next as better at least. Even if it was nothing, life without Rick was nothing, and at least dead he wouldn't be forced to pretend it was anything but what it was. 

 

"Hey Rick," Kieren said, words slow to come to his mouth, staggered and measured. He held photos in his hand and looked at his smiling face and at Rick's smiling face and how he was back but Rick was still gone and none of it was fair - none of it. "I'm sorry I'm here without you. But I'm back and you're not and you know what? That's still bullshit."

He didn't even fully regret dying - maybe death would be better than the glares from his sister, the panicked looks from his mother, and the meaningless words from his father. Nothing would be better, and he meant that literally - the hospital, and its blank monotony, that was better than this. 

"I want to paint again, Rick, I really do. But I can't paint anything happy, not without you, not without Jem, not without my family being my family. It's a joke really. Everyone says a stage of grief is bargaining and its like 'hey! the bargaining worked!' but no one wants it like this Rick, the cost is too much. I don't blame them. I was relieved as I died, all I felt was relief and love for you and what if that was all I could feel? And I can't feel anymore?"

Kieren trailed off, hearing the front door of the house open. His parents still didn't like leaving him home alone too much. So with that, he put the paintings away and was silent again. 

 

"Hey Rick!" Kieren yelled, not caring who heard him, in that graveyard along so many others who had sacrificed their life for what amounted to nothing in the end. "Rick! You don't deserve this!" 

Tears were pouring freely down his face - thanks to the wonders of modern medicine - but he hardly felt like he deserved it. Two lives over and he'd cried more than he had any right to, Rick hardly ever cried. Rarely in his first life, and in his second, after he'd risen? After he'd risen and been found and medicated and sent home and found Kieren again he never got the chance to cry. Never on the medication long enough for those nerves to reconnect. So Kieren was crying, crying for the two of them and the future they'd never get and the life Rick lost twice over and for their young love that would be forever destined to be just that: young love. And for Kieren, he cried because he was destined to always be that: young. Never to grow old, Jem already looking the same age as him as is. 

"Rick I love you. I'll never stop loving you and you're gone I know, but I think I'll stick around this time. I think I have to. For you. I don't think I can run away this time, I have to stay and fight Rick, I can't let this happen again, to anyone. But Rick, I fucking love you."

Kieren fell to his knees beside Rick's grave, hand grazing the fresh grass around it. 

"I love you," he whispered. "And I'm not gonna stop. I won't do that to you."


End file.
